The present invention relates to systems and methods for deploying network resources in heterogeneous network environments to support, for example, cloud-based services.
The term “cloud computing” refers to computing models for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services). Cloud-based services are rapidly becoming the primary way in which services are provided to businesses and consumers over the Internet and the World Wide Web.
The predominant way in which such resources are configured, deployed, and managed today involves the manual configuration, deployment, and management of individual system resources. This may not present an issue when the number of resources is small, e.g., 5 or 10 servers. However, as a cloud-based service or suite of services scales to meet increased customer demand, e.g., hundreds or thousands of servers across multiple geographically distinct colocations, manual techniques become a serious bottleneck to the scalability and delivery of such services.
In addition, manual deployment of network resources requires a relatively high level of programming skill and a detailed knowledge of the current configuration of deployed resources and, due to the complexity of the tasks involved, often requires time consuming trial-and-error troubleshooting of resource components and parameters before deployment is successful. The level of professional skill and institutional knowledge required for such key activities also represents a single point of failure from a system perspective, e.g., when a key employee moves on. These are undesirable technical and economic barriers to the deployment of cloud-based services.